The Secondary English Elective Curriculum

Abstract

adoption of elective curricula in the English departments of American high schools has been called the most significant curriculum innovation of the twentieth century.' Unlike many innovations, however, the elective curriculum was not simply endorsed by theorists and slowly or rarely accepted by practitioners. To the contrary, the elective curriculum was widely and enthusiastically embraced by teachers and English departments all over the country. So quickly, in fact, did the elective movement spreadone writer even called it a national stampede2 -that, while in their 1968 study James R. Squire and Roger K. Applebee found it necessary to add an additional 19 schools with 'experimental' to even discuss elective curricular forms, in Arthur Applebee's 1977 study, fully 78% of the respondents had some form of an elective program involving high school seniors.3 Thus the elective program has not only been acknowledged as a significant movement, it has literally swept the secondary English field. At this present time, however, many secondary schools which have adopted any form of an elective curriculum are in the process of dismantling it or putting limits upon it. The honeymoon with elective programs seems to be over, Stephen Judy, editor of the English Journal, has declared.4 There is also some indication that, due to pressure from competency testing and the general back to the basics fervor, as well as the failure of the secondary English elective curriculum to fulfill its earlier promise (becoming, as one writer puts it, an undisciplined, uncritical leap into instant relevance5), such programs will soon begin a significant decline.6